


Ever A Princess In My Memory

by Felle



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Arranged Marriage, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 02:20:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22008343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felle/pseuds/Felle
Summary: After the sack of Derdriu and the fall of the Leicester Alliance, Edelgard has exactly one option for keeping Adrestia's new border with Almyra peaceful: a marriage to their heir apparent and her erstwhile prisoner of war, Claude von Riegan.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 9
Kudos: 219





	Ever A Princess In My Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the situation as it stands, since I don't know if I'll get around to writing the rest of this Crimson Flower AU: instead of killing him or letting him fly off, Edelgard takes Claude hostage at Derdriu as the Almyran forces close in. The Almyran army shows up some time later, understandably upset that their crown prince is a prisoner, but some quick thinking nets Edelgard a wedding instead of another war. And a not-unattractive husband, too.

It was, truthfully, a perfect day for a wedding. From dawn not a cloud had crossed the sky, the air had stayed pleasantly warm but not too much so, and now the sunset was painting oranges and purples to the west while fireflies began to flash like faint green pinpricks. The sounds of the guests spilled out of the main hall, creating a din that overmatched the musicians as often as not, and large braziers lined with lightly scented oils were being lit to make up for the failing daylight.

A perfect day for a wedding.

Would that they had a happier bride.

Edelgard sighed and pushed at the side of her crown. It hurt, wearing it for this long, a pain that wound its way into her neck so faintly at first that she almost didn’t notice until her whole head ached. Still, she couldn’t take it off. Not here, not now. Not in front of these people. Nor could she really sit to take in the view of the overlook immediately north of the old academy classrooms. This wedding gown would only allow her to sit at the very edge of a flat seat, to say nothing of a bench that inclined backward. A day of small indignities, she reminded herself, for a much larger prize. The comfort of that thought extended only so far.

“I thought I might find you here.”

She looked up from examining the lace at the end of her sleeve and toward the sound of Hubert’s voice. He had dispensed with his cape and pauldrons for the day and carried a single cup of tea in his hand that he set on the merlon in front of her. The slight astringence of the bergamot made her take a deep breath. “It’s unbecoming to walk out of one’s own wedding, I know,” Edelgard said.

“Do you think I’ve come to upbraid you over protocol? Over something you were maneuvered into by that scheming duke?”

“The title of crown prince takes precedence, doesn’t it? And he isn’t a duke now, at any rate.” She took a testing sip of the tea. Heated exactly how she liked it, of course, and well-sugared. “And I doubt you could upbraid me even if I ordered you to.”

Hubert made a small sound of agreement and took up beside her at the wall, remaining just out of arm’s length. Edelgard would have taken a step to close the distance, but that seemed somehow improper now. Or at least needlessly testing the bounds of propriety. She was a married woman, after all. Married, and not to him. “I could still have him killed, if you desire. It would look like an accident, no one would say otherwise.”

“ _No_ , Hubert.”

“Then perhaps a few drops of sivrein venom in his tea, just enough to render him impotent—”

“Hubert, please listen to me carefully because you know how loathe I am to repeat myself,” Edelgard said, turning to him in her uncomfortable slippers. “You are to treat him and his bodily integrity as you would my own. The political risks aside, I do not want you to harm my husband. Is that understood?”

It was difficult to know when she had actually cowed him, but eventually he inclined his head. Edelgard relaxed and took another sip of tea. “As you wish, Your Majesty. But please, allow me this: if he hurts you…tonight, or any other night…I _will_ kill him. Slowly.”

“Aw, come on, Hubert, I thought you knew me better than that. Do you really think I’d scheme my way into this, which I know you still believe, only to act like a brute? It’s not my style.”

They both turned around. Claude von Riegan, crown prince of Almyra, recently-deposed sovereign duke of Leicester, and even more recently prince consort of Adrestia, was smoothing back some hair that had fallen to frame his face. The trappings of his former position were gone, replaced by an Almyran army dress uniform that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Edelgard own ranks—a deep, rich black surcoat with trousers to match, both trimmed in white, a thick aiguillette hanging to one side and a sash lined with silver and red supporting an identical belt holding a saber on one hip and an empty quiver of oiled white leather on the other. His boots, polished to shining, were fit for taking to the skies on his wyvern, coming up to just below his knees with complicated stitchwork patterns rendered in white thread. A golden, full-length cape slashed with sable and blazoned with the crown prince’s seal hung over his left shoulder, complicating his silhouette further. Each small movement of his head made his single pearl earring jostle, half-hidden by loose locks of disobedient brown hair pushed back by navy-gloved hands. Edelgard leaned back against the wall. Her new husband cleaned up well, she couldn’t deny him that.

“Someone might notice if neither of us are in there,” she said.

“With the good wine flowing? I’d say it’s a coin toss.”

Claude approached them slowly, keeping a bench in between them for as long as possible, before finally stepping into the periphery of Edelgard’s personal space. The last five years had been…kind to him. Kind. That seemed like the most judicious word. Or the safest. “I’ve never been partial to alcohol, I didn’t know we had unstopped a good vintage.”

“It’s a little bitter. It has a pale, reedy body. Speaking of,” Claude said, inclining his head toward Hubert, “I’d hoped, Marquis Vestra, that I might have a private moment with my wife?”

“How rarely we get the things we hope for.”

Edelgard shook her head. “It’s all right, go and enjoy your evening. Actually—I don’t know if I’ll return to the party. Make whatever excuses for me you see fit.”

“Then good night, Lady Edelgard.”

“Weddings really bring out his cheery side, don’t they,” Claude said dryly once he was out of earshot, leaning against the wall’s merlon. Edelgard suppressed a chuckle and returned to her tea. When she looked down to set it on the wall, she saw a few of the Almyran candies the bridegroom’s side of the wedding had brought, wrapped in thin, colorful wax paper. “I don’t think you had the chance to try these. And I know how you like sweets.”

“Courteous of you.”

The sunlight was beginning to fade as she unwrapped one of the candies and popped it into her mouth. Edelgard rolled it around on her tongue, taking in the sweetness—faintly reminiscent of apples, or maybe a plum—before biting into the soft gelatin center. It was probably a good thing that they didn’t have these in Fódlan, or she might have eaten them to the exclusion of everything else. “Lovely,” she said.

Claude nodded and turned around to face the overlook with her. Neither of them spoke for several minutes. What was there to say, really? Protestations aside, Edelgard did believe that the way things had unfolded at Derdriu would have been impossible to plan, much less everything afterward, even for a schemer of the highest order like Claude. No, these twists of fate had not been written by a human hand. She realized, perhaps too late, that at least some of the plots and contrivances she had attributed to Claude over the years may have been more improvisation on his part than a matter of carefully arranging the board. Eventually he asked, “Has it hit you yet? All of this?”

“Not quite. Yourself?”

“No, not even close. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how this place doesn’t feel like school anymore.”

A cold wind blew up from the valley below and chilled Edelgard through her gown. She instinctively sheltered against Claude, who put his arm around her shoulders. They both seemed to realize after a moment, and Claude lifted his arm to let her move away, but Edelgard remained at his side. He was a good deal warmer than she was. “I don’t want to go back to the party,” Edelgard said. He was wearing some kind of earthy cologne. “These shoes are far too uncomfortable to stay in much longer.”

“Then may I walk you back to your quarters, princess?”

Edelgard touched his hand resting on her shoulder, lightly scratching at the soft fabric of his glove. There was a ring under the other, a simple platinum band around his third finger. “I suppose they’re _our_ quarters now. I’ll need to have the northern wall knocked down to expand the space. And you might try the proper forms of address, since you know very well that I am no longer a princess. Just as you are no longer a duke.”

“Oh, but _princess_ just rolls off the tongue, don’t you think?” He looked sidelong at her. “It’s what you were the day I met you, and that’s always going to be scorched into my mind. You have my promise that I will be nothing but properly decorous in company, of course. But all the crowns and regalia in the world won’t change my memory of a fair-haired princess outside the training grounds, hefting an axe as big as her head to split a training dummy in two.”

Claude applied some gentle pressure across her shoulders to pull her in closer. Strangely, Edelgard felt no urge to push away. She could have, easily, but it felt rather comforting to be in his embrace. The memory of their matrimonial kiss, a chaste little peck on the lips, swanned up to the forefront of her thoughts as she looked up at him. “You—you may walk me back to our quarters, Claude.”

He took a step back and offered his arm.

The partygoers and well-wishers would simply have to make do without them for the rest of the night. Judging by the sounds coming from the main hall, it seemed they were getting on fine as it was. Claude led her through the old campus and one of the gardens to get to the second level of dormitories, then down the hall to her room near the middle. Edelgard kept her arm looped around his until he opened the door for her. She immediately reached down and tugged at the complicated system of strings, clasps and fastenings keeping her slippers in place until they began to fall away. “That’s better,” she said, holding her desk for support as she kicked them off one after the other. Edelgard turned around and saw Claude still at the threshold, leaning against the door frame. “Aren’t you going to come inside?”

“I’m fine going back to my own room for the night, if you prefer. I would hate to impose on a lady.”

“You’re not imposing, you’re my husband. Besides, everyone is expecting us to come out of the same room in the morning. If the Almyran delegation thinks this is a sham, then we’re going to have to contend with another war. I have neither the patience nor the resources to prosecute one. Please come in.”

He did, shutting the door behind him. Edelgard lit a few candles before it grew too dark to see and was immediately faced with a problem. In her haste to usher him inside, she had left herself no privacy to change into something more practical. “Wait, you may as well go to your room and get into your nightclothes while I do the same,” she said, one hand resting over a fastener on her gown.

“Is this a bad time to mention that I don’t sleep in nightclothes?” Claude asked, then grinned when Edelgard’s face colored. “Relax, princess. I’ll find something appropriate.”

Whatever his idea of _appropriate_ was notwithstanding, Edelgard said nothing as he slipped out of her room. She allowed herself a moment of vague imagining, then went about undoing her gown. Getting her into it had required a pair of handmaids to hold everything in place, but taking it off was a much simpler matter. Pieces of silk and lace fell away as she undid more loops and fastenings, until it was all on the floor. Edelgard looked down at the crisscross of scars on her body, old and recent, then chose the most covering set of nightclothes she had despite the warm night. She wondered if she could get away with gloves as well before discarding that idea and hanging up her gown as best she could. A knock came at the door. “Decent again, princess?”

“You may enter,” Edelgard said, bracing herself. She looked down at her hands, at the marks and lines on her palms, at the missing nail on her little finger. Hands made for gloves, she had once joked acidly. Well. She would just have to disappoint him. “Claude?”

“The door’s locked.”

“Oh! My apologies, it’s habit.”

She unbolted the door and threw it open. Her new husband had elected for a set of light cotton nightclothes, though he had only fastened the lower half of the buttons of the nightshirt. Edelgard’s gaze lingered on his visible wedge of chest hair for a moment before she stood aside to let him back in. “You…brought a book? And a deck of cards?” she asked.

Claude placed them on her desk. “I didn’t know if you had your own.”

Edelgard took the opportunity to turn away from him as she shut the door and bolted it again. Her reaction was torn between vague insult and unqualified relief. On one hand, she was his wife, he was her husband. Shouldn’t he have had a rather baser idea of how they might spend their wedding night? On the other hand, the one with the missing nail, Edelgard doubted very much that she could have enjoyed it as much as she knew she was meant to, given a considerate lover. Somehow Claude didn’t strike her as inconsiderate in that regard, either.

Her forehead thumped against the door as the indecision resolved itself. Insult it was. “We didn’t get married to play cards,” Edelgard said.

Claude was silent. Then, footsteps. He stopped behind her and spoke gently. “No, we didn’t. We married to prevent another war from starting inside the one already going. We married to pacify the border at Fódlan’s Throat. Would you please turn around? I’d like to hug you.”

She did, and he did. It was a very firm embrace, closing in from all sides. Claude was tall enough that he could rest his head atop hers as she rested her cheek in his shirt. It smelled freshly laundered. His arms around her back pulled her closer. Even as she melted into his chest, he was walking them toward her bed. “If I’ve wounded your womanly pride, let me take this opportunity to most sincerely apologize, princess.”

Edelgard rolled her eyes into his shirt. “Maybe in my haste not to act unduly on old feelings, I went a little too far in the other direction. Not that I wouldn’t happily play cards too, of course. But it wouldn’t be my first choice.”

“Old feelings?” she asked, resisting a small swell of pride. Her hands landed on his sides and tracked inward, to the firm tone of his stomach. She felt him flex beneath her fingers. “I thought everyone else had exactly one feeling toward me after I declared war on the church.”

He shrugged. “Well, I was never that devout. It _was_ a setback for my crush on you, I’ll admit, but I wouldn’t call it a deal breaker. An obstacle at most. Our ideals were never that far apart. The methods, sure. But not what we wanted.”

One of his hands rubbed a slow circuit up and down the middle of her back. Edelgard nuzzled against his chest. Claude seemed so wonderfully _solid_ , so present. Strong, but careful. Considerate. Wasted on her. A frown creased on her mouth.

“Well. I suppose we should get this over with, shouldn’t we?”

She trailed her hands down, but Claude stopped her. “I can’t say I have a lot of experience in this area, but it’s not something to ‘get over with’. That’s why I brought the cards, it really doesn’t seem like you want to—”

“No! No, I’m not explaining it properly. Sit down, please.” Edelgard pushed away slightly and stepped back as he eased down on the bed. She tried to steady herself with a long breath. This was proving more unnerving than marching her army to battle. “I…I want to, I do. But it’s more complicated than what the two of us might want. I’m not sure that my body can accommodate the feelings I imagine you would want to eke out. If you seemed like the kind of man to just take your pleasure I might not have said anything, but I have no wish to cause you undue frustration. There’s no sense running a race if you can never reach the finish line, is there?”

Claude cocked his head in appeal, and his eyes widened when Edelgard worked one arm from its sleeve and she showed him the network of surgical scars there, from wrist to shoulder. “I assure you, the rest of my body is more of the same. The process of implanting a second Crest is not simple any more than it is painless.”

“Edelgard…”

“I had thought to put the lights out before disrobing, but I don’t wish to deceive you. You’ve been forthright with me, I should be the same.” Her mouth twisted into a grimace as she finished removing her nightshirt and closed her eyes, unable to see his look of disgust. Edelgard wondered what would do it. The long raised scar running down the middle of her chest? The gnarl of tissue above one hipbone? There were always the veins in her right elbow that had been artificially drawn upward and now rested immediately beneath the surface of her skin. She turned around to show him the burn on her back in the shape of the Crest of Flames. “If you want to go back to your room, I would understand. We can concoct a reason in the morning.”

“May I take your crown off?” Claude asked. Edelgard opened her eyes. He was gazing right at her, not at her scars—not at her breasts either, which was almost more surprising. She touched her headpiece. In her nerves, she had forgotten to remove it.

“M-my crown?”

“Yeah. It can’t be comfortable, having your hair bound up that tightly to support it.”

“No, not really…”

“Take a seat, I’ll see if I can figure it out.”

Edelgard found herself sitting at her desk as Claude stood and closed the distance between them she had created. She pointed out the clasps concealed behind the horns and at the back of her head, and he methodically removed each piece before putting it back together on her desk to keep it organized. That done, he carefully unwound the buns of hair that had supported it, letting it all spill over her shoulders and down her back. The low ache in her scalp that always seemed present lessened, granting her some small respite. “Thank you,” Edelgard said as he smoothed it back.

“I always loved your hair, princess.” Claude’s fingers went through her locks, drawing out knots that had formed during the day. Edelgard found herself wanting to lean back into him. “I loved looking at it. Wondering what it might feel like. We don’t have hair colors like purple and green and blue in Almyra, but even back then I knew yours was something special. It’s…it’s another scar, isn’t it? Like Lysithea’s.”

She shrank in her chair. “Yes. It used to be brown.”

“Would it bother you if I said I still liked it, knowing that?” Claude asked. He began working her hair into a simple, loose braid suitable for sleeping. “It’s striking.”

“I suppose I can’t deny you when you’ve been so understanding.”

When he was done, Edelgard stood and snuffed two of the candles on the stand in the corner. “I appreciate the play at chivalry if it was a way to distract from not wanting to share my bed, but I have no other regalia for you to remove,” she said.

Claude sighed. “Who’s playing at chivalry? Did I go too far in the other direction again? Would it make my position clearer if I described in minute detail all of the things I’d like to do with you?” He pushed her desk chair in and took a testing step toward her. Edelgard didn’t back away. Claude took her hand and kissed the back of her fingers. His eyes seemed to bore into her, and Edelgard felt her stomach tingle. “Because I’ve been told I can paint quite a picture with my words, and I have several years’ worth of imaginings on my palette.”

“Do you,” Edelgard said, letting him lead her to her bedside.

“I do.”

He grabbed the corner of the duvet and tossed it aside so they could sit on the sheets. Edelgard reached up and ran one finger down the thin strip of beard that followed his jawline. It was very soft. “Then paint your picture, Prince Claude. Your audience is waiting.”

“Where to begin…I want to know how you feel, all over. How you taste. I want to find the spots that make you shiver and tighten up around me.” Claude brushed some still-loose hair from Edelgard’s cheek and kissed the soft space beneath her ear. His hand settled on her knee. Edelgard slowly pitched her head back to allow him better access to her throat. When he spoke again, his voice against her skin seemed to go right down into her. “I want to hear a desperate little whine in your lovely voice.”

Edelgard didn’t _mean_ to indulge him right then, letting a moan work through her throat, but his hand still tightened on her leg. “Something like that,” Claude said. He kissed a line down the side of her neck and into the crook of her shoulder while his other hand settled on the small of her back. His thumb brushed lightly on her burn mark, and her chest felt terribly warm, suddenly. “Maybe a little higher, more urgent. The kind of sound a princess would make.”

“This…oh…this picture seems quite focused on what you’d like to do to me, but I haven’t heard what you’d like me to do to you.” She had _some_ idea, of course, she wasn’t a child. The way men and women fit together and what was supposed to result. But Dorothea had never been all that clear on the specifics, nor had Edelgard summoned up the nerve to ask her to clarify.

Claude’s hand slid upward. Her legs parted to let him, and he rubbed a soft circle so very close to the top of her thigh. She wanted to nudge it the rest of the way and finally see if that part of her hadn’t been burned out, but the anticipation wasn’t without its benefits. Claude bit playfully at her collarbone. “Ordinarily that part would be for you to fill in, but I did have a few ideas, if your imperial ears won’t burn from the scandal.”

“I think you’ll find I’m made from stronger stuff than that.”

He decided to challenge that by finally resting his hand between her legs. Edelgard’s breath rushed out as if she’d been struck. How embarrassing, getting worked up before he’d even started moving. Edelgard hooked two fingers into his shirt and tugged at the buttons. “As you like. I may have wondered, once or twice, how your hands would feel on my cock. Or your mouth, if you were so inclined. You have such a sharp tongue, I thought I might be able to persuade you to soften it for a night. And I know you aren’t much of a rider, but I can’t count the nights I lost sleep thinking about you mounting and riding me,” Claude said, barely breathing the words across her skin.

Edelgard rocked her hips forward to get at his hand. “I wouldn’t be wounding your manly pride by being on top?”

“Pride is so oversold, my lady.”

Claude moved his hand, just a minute distance, and Edelgard clutched at his shirt. Well, he was certainly getting some kind of reaction out of her. Edelgard undid the buttons with shaking hands and pushed it aside as best she could, distracted by the ways his fingers were testing different pressures through her nightclothes. She pressed a quick kiss to his chest and found she rather liked the softness of his hair on her lips.

“Oh.”

Pushing his shirt aside had left the uppermost portion of his lap exposed, along with the prominent swell below his waistband, bunching the fabric of his trousers into something of a tent. Her breath came out in a shaky exhale. “That’s your…arousal,” Edelgard said, her gaze following the thicker line of hair that fell from his navel and disappeared underneath his trousers.

“Mmhmm.”

Claude took his hand from her back to support himself, still moving the other over her sex. Edelgard touched at his stomach, felt him suck in a breath through the muscle there. “May I?” she asked.

“It would be fitting, seeing as how you’re the cause…but only if you wish.”

She wished. She didn’t say it out loud, but the way they paused long enough to do away with the rest of their clothes seemed answer enough. They shuffled about on the bed until they were sitting up and facing one another, left legs over the other’s rights, easily in arm’s reach. Edelgard, for her part, knew her face must have been a brilliant shade of red. This was not _proper_ , it might well have been a scene out of one of Dorothea’s lewd books, but Claude was making her feel good and that had to be enough for the moment.

“Like this, then?” she asked, and took him in her hand. The mix of softness and stiffness was a bit strange, but not unpleasant. He was warm against her palm. She firmed her grip ever so slightly, brushing her thumb along the underside. Claude’s throat bobbed, and his hips pushed forward under her attentions. “Oh.”

He slipped his own hand between her legs again, two fingers resting on either side of her clit. Edelgard opened her mouth and got out only a stretch of silence. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so wanting for words, princess…yes, that’s perfect. All you need to do is go up and down. And you? Is this pressure all right?”

Edelgard nodded, not trusting herself with words when a squeak seemed more likely. Instead she focused on working Claude in her hand, stroking down on his shaft and then drawing back up. His thighs tensed and relaxed with her rhythm just as hers were doing in response to his hand, so she tried speeding up. One side of his lower lip rolled between his teeth, and his head bowed forward slightly as his hips rocked. The circuit of his fingers quickened, making everything in her body burn, until both of them were gasping for air. Edelgard closed her eyes, pushing toward his hand, when the heat overwhelmed her. She fell forward into Claude’s chest, jolts of pleasure working through her, choking on a cry from the sensation of it all. Claude’s fingers vanished, replaced by his arms closing around her instead as tears pricked at her eyes.

She drifted on that wave for several minutes. Was it minutes? It might have been hours, the remaining candles were starting to burn down. Edelgard flicked her fingers and reignited the ones she had snuffed earlier. Her breath escaped in what might have been a laugh, or a contented sigh. The world had yet to reorient itself enough to be sure. “I think,” Claude said, rubbing a soft circle into her back, “we’ve answered that question.”

“That’s what it feels like? All that windup and then a burst?” she asked, mumbling into his collarbone.

“You’ve never…?”

Edelgard moved her head enough to wipe her tears into Claude’s shoulder. “I know _how_ to touch myself, how to make it feel good. But I never got that far. Sometimes there was too much on my mind, or I was worried that I simply couldn’t, but I always stopped before…that. Honestly I’m a bit annoyed that it took this long to find out.”

He chuckled. He had a nice laugh.

“Thank you,” she said. “Ah, did you—oh!”

She still had him in her hand, just as hard as before, with a slight wetness brushing at her thumb. “I was distracted, wasn’t I?”

Claude made a vaguely affirmative sound as he rocked into her touch. Edelgard shifted back enough to look. It was…well, it wasn’t insubstantial, she knew that much. And their difference in stature only magnified that perception. She grasped at the base and put his cock against her stomach. The breath she was trying for caught in her throat. Her rather clinical education in the matter aside, the thought of _that_ pushing up between her legs renewed a spark of the warmth that he had already stoked.

“That isn’t right,” Edelgard said, and planted a hand on Claude’s chest until he was prone on the bed. She clambered atop him. Claude propped himself up on one elbow and grasped Edelgard’s thigh with his free hand. “What was it you said, something about me mounting and riding you?”

His tongue pressed into his cheek. Edelgard was suddenly terribly curious about how that would feel, his mouth on her, but she really did need to reciprocate now. “I suppose I did say that…not that I meant _now_ , I figured you might finish me off with your hands—”

“It’s our wedding night, isn’t it?”

She reached forward and smoothed back some of his hair. Claude leaned into her touch, his fingers firm around her thigh, then sat back up so that she was in his lap. “Mounting and riding is all well and good, but I think I’d prefer,” he began, lips brushing across hers as his hand snuck upward to the swell of her rear, “to be a little closer, princess.”

“I think I can oblige that.”

Claude kissed her, needfully, while he guided her up so they could position themselves properly. Edelgard clutched at his shoulders when she felt him pressing at her, so very close—but still waiting, ever the gentleman. “Slowly, yes?” she asked when they moved back from each other.

“The pace is yours to set here.”

Edelgard nodded, took a long breath, and sank down.

The warmth that had tickled at her swelled to a burn, a blissful, stretching fullness as she took him in. Claude kept his hand on her rear to keep her from falling too fast, but gradually relaxed his hold when Edelgard kissed him again. “Doing all right?” he asked, barely moving back from her lips. Edelgard nodded and willed herself to relax, until she was back in his lap, as close to him as she possibly could be. “Fuck…”

Once she had her breath back, Edelgard pushed upward and then back down, trying to match the length of her strokes to how her hands had gone before. It was probably overkill, judging by the way Claude had grabbed her rear and was panting her name under his breath like a litany. Still. She went at him again, shifting about in his lap while flitting her tongue at his lips until they parted for her. When she rocked forward, his grip tightened. Backward, and it was all he could do to pull her closer again. This kind of power could get intoxicating, she thought.

Not that he was idly allowing her to take all the control. His free hand skated down her stomach and settled between her legs, matching with her rhythm. Despite still tingling from her last—first—orgasm, his fingertips brushing at her clit aroused the same heady pleasure as before. His kisses deepened when she took him to the hilt, almost scorching in its fullness, and his fingers danced on her outstroke, making her legs weak and prompting her to fall back on him.

She was never going to get any work done with him around.

Her stamina couldn’t quite outlast his own, and Edelgard pushed her legs together around his hips as he teased out another orgasm. She broke their kiss, desperate for air as she twitched and shivered, and the squeeze of her body around him pushed him over the edge with her. Quite a different rush of warmth ran through her, so dizzying that she barely noticed herself falling on the crook of Claude’s shoulder and biting hard enough to bruise. He hissed in pain and repaid her in kind, teeth sinking into her skin as he sucked until a short _pop_ broke her out of her reverie.

The last of her thrusts came to rest atop him, and Claude’s thighs tensed underneath her from the stimulation. He embraced her once more, keeping her close enough that she could feel the steadying rise and fall of his chest. Edelgard listened to his breathing, harsh and warm on her shoulder and the new mark he had given her, while she wound one hand to his back to feel his heart beating.

“Your imaginings,” Edelgard said. Her breath was ragged. She kissed lightly at the blotch of purple she had left on his skin. Thank the goddess for high collars. “Were they something like that?”

One of his hands crept up to the nape of her neck to hold her exactly where she was. As if she was going to leave. “Pale and lifeless compared to the real thing,” he whispered.

“You’re a shameless flatterer.”

Claude tipped back onto the bed with Edelgard still in his lap, until she rolled to one side and quickly latched onto him. His arm lifted to let her get closer, and their legs tangled together. “Yes I am, princess. But not right now. Not about this.”

They stayed like that, Claude stroking her hair, Edelgard drawing little circles across his chest, until the candles burned down.


End file.
